* * *
Bobby nearly jumped out of his boots when the alarm claxon started blaring. For several seconds both his team and the pirates in the barracks simply stared at each other. Then a voice boomed from the PA system.
“A fleet of enemy ships is approaching the base! All gun crews report to your stations!”
For several moments everyone remained frozen where they were.
“Didn’t you just hear the order?” Bobby said, surprising himself as he stepped forward and addressed the room full of pirates. “The commandant sent us to guard this installation in case any of the enemy tries to enter here. The rest of you need to get to your stations immediately.” At first no one reacted.
“MOVE!”
That did the trick. In moments every man in the barracks began racing to equipment lockers and pulling on protective gear. Clive motioned to his team and led them through a doorway on the far side of the room. Stepping through they found themselves in a wide hallway which curved gently upward in both directions. A surprising number of people were rushing about. Apparently the bunker was more heavily occupied than they had first believed.
The moment he entered the corridor Bobby paused and bent over, resting his hands against his thighs. His heart was pounding and he needed a moment to catch his breath.
“That was quick thinking in there,” Clive’s voice said to him over his suit radio. “You could be an officer with that kind of command presence.” Now that they were inside the base it was safe to use their suit comms. Their transmissions were encrypted and would simply blend in with all the other background electronic noise.
“No problem,” Bobby said after his racing heart had slowed a bit. “You can thank my father for the attitude. You did not want to be on his bad side when he took that tone.” He gulped several more breaths then straightened. “I’m good.”
“This way,” Clive said after glancing in both directions. They started moving at a slow jog as they made their way along the corridor. In spite of the number of people rushing about, everyone was quick to get out of the way of four men in battle armor. It was a strange sensation to be jogging up what seemed to be an ever curving slope while feeling that they were still on a level surface. As they moved further toward the end of the complex they found themselves encountering fewer and fewer people until they were the only ones in the hallway.
After a short time they could see the end of the corridor ahead. Bobby recognized the wall of black monitor panels they had observed through the viewport earlier. The panels were still displaying what was to him a mysterious pattern of lights. When they reached the end of the hall, the three marines stepped up to the panels and studied them while Bobby kept watch.
“The generators are being spun up to full,” Clive said. “They’re getting ready to fire the guns. There’s also a small, secondary line leading off to another area, but I’m not sure what that’s for.”
“Where are the generators?” Bobby asked.
Clive studied the panels for a moment, then turned and pointed to the last door in the corridor. As they stepped up to the door it slid open for them. They stepped through and found themselves in a wide compartment. To their left was a security door with an armed guard posted in front of it carrying a plasma rifle. A second guard was seated at a desk console beside the doorway. Directly above the door was a sensor bubble and positioned on the ceiling and on both walls were small blaster turrets. Clive immediately recognized the arrangement as being identical to the way the Fleet protected high security areas. As soon as they stepped into the vestibule the guard leveled his weapon at them as the trio of mounted turrets brought their muzzles to bear.
“No one’s supposed to be in here,” the armed guard said.
Clive stepped forward. “We were sent to protect the generators. The base is under attack.”
The guard with the rifle narrowed his eyes. “We didn’t receive any orders about that.”
“Look, I appreciate that you’re trying to do your job,” Clive said, “but we need to get in there and make sure that no one is able to get at those generators.”
“You’re not going anywhere until I get confirmation that you’re even supposed to be here.” The guard said. He jabbed in their direction with his weapon. “Now put your hands up.”
The four of them slowly raised their hands. While their battle armor gave them some protection from blaster fire, a plasma rifle at point blank range could punch right through even their tough plating.
Taking a solid stance, the guard turned his head slightly toward his partner while he kept the four of them in his sight. “Cooper, get on the comm to the main control room and see if they sent anyone down here.”
As the seated guard contacted the bunker control room Clive pointed at the security door with one hand. “You really need to let us in there. While we’re standing here wasting time enemy saboteurs could be—”
“Shut up!” the pirate said. “How do I know that you’re not saboteurs? My orders are to see that no one gets in there. And until I’m told different …”
At that moment the lights dimmed as a subsonic vibration reverberated through the base. It was the unmistakable sensation of a vast amount of power being suddenly released. Clive acted in that instant.
Activating his gauntlet gun, Clive raked the area in front of the security door with blaster fire. The wrist mounted guns were another of the upgrades they had made to the suits. He swung his arm back and forth as he laid down a heavy spray of fire. The blaster bolts tore through the bodies of both guards and chewed gouges in the walls. The instant he opened fire the automated defenses in the room sprang to life, showering them with return fire. The team separated immediately, causing a momentary hesitation in the automated guns as the computer decided which target each gun would track. As blaster fire bounced off their armor and chewed holes into the floor around them, they each returned fire. While Clive and his team could move freely about the room, the turrets were locked in fixed positions. It was not long before the armored men were able to score hits on each of the turrets and blast them to ruin. Less than thirty seconds after the shooting had begun it was over.
Clive took a quick look around the smoke filled room then raised his arm and fired one last shot at the sensor bubble over the security door.
“We might have thirty seconds or three minutes,” Clive said as he dragged the guard’s body away from the door. “You’ve got to get that door open, Jimmy.”
As Jimmy started working on the security panel beside the door, Bruce hurried over to the door they had entered through. There was small control panel with an emergency lock switch on the wall beside it. Bruce slapped the lock button and a red light started blinking above the door.
“The door’s locked,” Bruce said, “but I’m guessing they can override it from outside.”
“Jam it,” Clive ordered.
Raising his arm, Bruce shot the panel. It exploded in a bright shower of sparks, leaving the cover hanging askew.
Then the rest of the team joined Jimmy as he worked on opening the security door. There were more safeguards in place here than there had been on the airlock door and it was taking him some time to bypass the additional measures. He had been working on the door for perhaps a minute when they heard pounding coming from the hall. After a while the pounding stopped. It seemed too soon for them to give up, Bobby thought. He looked back at the room’s entrance and saw a red spot beginning to brighten on the wall just past the door.
“They’re coming through,” Bobby warned as sparks began to shower from the center of the glowing spot.
“Jimmy?” Clive said.
“I need a little longer,” Jimmy said.
Clive turned to look back and saw a line being cut through the wall beside the door. At the rate they were cutting he estimated that they would have an opening big enough to step through in a couple of minutes. He tapped Bobby and Bruce a
nd motioned for them to spread out. They moved apart as they each raised their arms and took aim at the place on the wall where the pirates were cutting through.
Bobby watched as the line being cut through the wall described an arc near the ceiling and started down. He tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry. He shifted his position to have a better angle on where the pirates would be coming through when something on the floor caught his eye. It was the guard’s plasma rifle. He stooped over and picked up the weapon. The clip was fully charged which would give him about twelve shots. Tucking the stock into his shoulder he lowered himself to one knee as he raised the weapon and sighted at the wall. Having the rifle in his hands helped to bolster his nerves. Several seconds later the sparking dot returned the spot where they had started cutting.
It was silent for a moment, then the cut section of wall shuddered as it was struck from the other side and slowly toppled inward to crash against the floor. A few seconds later a face cautiously peered around the edge of the opening. The instant he saw movement Bobby’s finger spasmed against his trigger. The shot went wide, striking the wall and exploding in a brilliant shower of metal fragments and dispersing energy. The pirate yelped and immediately pulled back.
It was silent for several more moments.
Then a large group of men charged through the opening at the same time, shouting and firing as they came. Although they were not wearing battle armor they did have protective vests and helmets. Close to a dozen pirates rushed into the room. Each one was armed with a blaster rifle and they immediately started firing in the direction of Clive’s team. In their rush to get through the opening however the pirates bumped into each other and stumbled over the thick section of wall laying on the floor, making their shots go astray. Clive, Bruce and Bobby took careful aim from their positions and scored hits immediately on the tightly clustered pirates. A number of them staggered as their vests absorbed blaster strikes, but they recovered quickly and continued to advance into the room. A few who were unfortunate enough to get hit in the arm or leg went down immediately to lay writhing in pain.
While the vests protected the pirates from blaster fire, Bobby’s plasma rifle was a different matter. The rifle barked twice in the first few moments of the pirates’ charge through the door, each time scoring a telling hit. One of the attackers had a leg sheared off below the knee. He fell screaming, causing several of his fellows to topple across him. Another caught a blast directly to the chest which sent him hurtling against the far wall. He slid to the floor and lay crumpled against the base of the wall as a pool of blood formed beneath him.
Bobby was in the process of priming the weapon for another shot when a new group came through the opening. Before them they were pushing a pair of protective blast shields. The curved shields were two meters tall and one meter wide with a narrow view slit. Those pirates who were still able to move scrambled to get behind one of the shields. Blaster fire from Clive and Bruce bounced harmlessly off the shields.
Pushing himself to his feet Bobby fired off a blast directly at the closest shield. His shot exploded against the front of the shield and spilled away around the sides of the curved surface. Although his shot had left a burn mark on the armor plating it had not penetrated the shield. Bobby cocked the gun again, ratcheting the slide along the barrel of his weapon and fired off another shot. Although he scored another direct hit on the shield the effect was the same.
In moments the pirates brought both shields together, creating a two meter wide barrier behind which they barricaded themselves. Individual pirates popped out from around the sides of the barrier and returned fire at them. Because they didn’t want to expose themselves for more than a moment they didn’t have time to aim properly and most of their shots were off the mark. Those shots that did find their target were deflected by the team’s armor. For the moment the battle was a stalemate.
As Clive and Bruce fired back at their attackers, warning lights began to flicker on their helmet displays. The gauntlet guns were meant to be a surprise weapon and were not intended to last through a sustained fire fight. As they continued to return fire at the pirates they exhausted the last of their charge clips. Once these were drained and they switched to the only alternate energy source available to them—their suit power packs. By drawing on the suit packs they could continue to shoot back at the pirates, but they were quickly running down their reserves. Bruce and Clive husbanded their shots, reserving their return fire for those instances when a pirate poked his head around one of the shields to shoot at them. In this way they could continue fighting for several more minutes, but at the end of that time their suits would be out of power, leaving them helpless.
Things remained at an impasse for a while with neither side able to score a hit. Then the pirates began inching their shields forward, gradually closing the distance between their groups. Even though Clive and his team were wearing battle armor, if enough men piled on top of them they would be overwhelmed. A blaster pressed point blank into the gap between their protective plating would allow a fatal shot to rip through them, pulping their bodies inside their suits.
“Now would be a good time, Jimmy,” Clive said as he fired off a quick burst at a pirate who had popped out from the left side of the shield. One of shots struck the man just below the bottom edge of his face shield. The lower half of his face disintegrated in an explosion of blood and spraying bone fragments as his body tumbled backward.
“Got it!” Jimmy said.
The massive security door slowly began to slide open behind them. As Clive and the others backed through the widening gap, Bobby began cocking his gun and firing off shots as quickly as he could, alternating his aim between both of the shields. Blast after blast hammered against the shields, causing the pirates to stay huddled behind the protective barriers as the shields shuddered under the rapid fire impacts. Bobby kept firing as he backed toward the door, forcing the pirates to keep their heads down as he covered the team’s retreat. Just as he reached the doorway the rifle ran out of charge. Pulling the trigger one last time brought only an impotent click from the firing capacitor. Once that happened Bobby turned and dove through the door as several pirates sprang from behind their protective cover and fired.
As blaster fire sleeted after Bobby, Jimmy pounded the emergency close switch with his fist and the door slammed shut behind them. Grabbing the edges of the wall mounted control panel with his fingers, Jimmy used the power of his armor to rip the cover plate from the wall. He started searching through the circuitry inside the opening for a moment, thought better of it, then simply grabbed a hand full of components and yanked. Electrical fireworks erupted from the box as the control panel shorted out.
They found themselves inside a narrow corridor only slightly wider than the door they had come through. The passage continued for a few meters before it curved sharply downward at a ninety degree angle and disappeared straight down. Red and yellow stripes on the floor warned that a change in gravity orientation took place ahead. They would have to walk around the downward bend in the floor and proceed down a long passage to reach the generator room.
“Will they be able to open it from the other side?” Clive asked, looking at the door they had just come through.
“Not right away,” Jimmy said. “A series of deadbolt rods slid into place when I closed the door behind us. Since this hallway is only as wide as the door we came through they won’t be able to cut through the walls to get at us like they did before. They’re going to have to cut through the door itself, and that’s going to take some time. I’d say we have between half an hour and forty-five minutes.”
“Unless… ” Bruce said as he stepped up to the door and began examining the seams where the door and walls joined.
“What is it?” Clive asked.
“They might be able to get through using shaped charges,” Bruce said. As a demolitions specialist he was an expert at judging the stress tolerances
of different types of construction. He ran his eyes along the edges of the door for several more seconds before he turned back with a doubtful frown. “Without knowing more about how this place was put together I’d say it’s fifty-fifty that they’d end up causing a rupture that would open this section of the bunker to space. They’d have to be pretty desperate to try that.”
“And if they are that desperate, how long do we have?” Clive asked.
“As long as it takes them to place the charges,” Bruce said. “Not long.”
“We’d better get moving then,” Clive said. He glanced at Bobby and noted the hunched position he was standing in.
“Bobby? Are you alright?” Clive asked.
“I think I might have a problem,” Bobby said.
Clive stepped up beside him and saw the way he was holding one arm across his middle. Searching his armor quickly Clive found a burn mark on the rear of his suit close to his spine. The mark was centered in a place between two plates and he could see a blob of grey sealant that had leaked out to plug a hole in the suit. While the sealant had kept the suit airtight, it meant that a shot had penetrated his armor.
Bobby swayed slightly and started to collapse. Clive grabbed him and slung an arm around his shoulder to keep him on his feet.
“Sorry,” Bobby muttered.
“Don’t apologize. You did real good in there, son,” Clive said as he adjusted his grip on Bobby. “If it weren’t for you all of us would have taken fire.”
“Glad I could help,” Bobby said weakly.
“Don’t try to talk,” Clive said as he started along the corridor. “Jimmy, you’ve got point.”
The strength of his powered armor allowed Clive to carry Bobby with ease. Half a dozen paces later they were moving through the ninety degree bend in the corridor. The fluctuating gravity fields made Bobby’s head spin although Clive didn’t seem to be affected as he led them around the curved flooring. Soon they were heading straight down into the body of the asteroid. As they moved through the passage they could hear a deep hum vibrating in the air around them. Clive recognized it as the thrum of the generators that supplied power to the plasma cannons.
The passage ran for more than fifty meters before they came to another ninety degree bend. Once again they negotiated the disorienting gravity fluctuations until the corridor leveled out once more. After another few meters the corridor opened into a vast room with a vaulted roof that was several stories over their heads. The sound of the generators was louder here but still surprisingly subdued considering the amount of energy that was being channeled through them.
In spite of his injury, Bobby’s sense of direction continued to report to him about his surroundings. From what he could tell, they were directly underneath the command bunker which was now dozens of meters beneath their feet. In the center of the room was a pair of complicated towers of machinery. Each of the monstrous generators was large enough to power a small city.
“Jimmy, secure the perimeter. Bruce, you’re up,” Clive said. As Jimmy moved off to search the room, Bruce jogged over to the nearest generator to begin his sabotage.
Clive eased Bobby down to the floor beside the entrance to the room and removed his helmet. Bobby’s face was pale beneath a sheen of sweat.
“Well, this sucks,” Bobby said through clenched teeth.
Clive removed his own helmet and opened a panel on the chest of Bobby’s suit to study the bio readouts.
“The suit’s autodoc compressed the wound and plugged the hole with coagulant,” Clive said.
“Too bad it can’t do anything about the pain,” Bobby gasped.
Clive adjusted a control on the panel. Bobby immediately felt a cool numbness spread through his middle where there had been only fierce pain moments before.
“It can,” Clive explained as he studied his face, “but it needs to be done manually. You don’t necessarily want to cut off all sensation during a fight. You could end up causing yourself more harm if you ignore an injury and keep moving.”
Clive watched Bobby’s expression relax as the anesthetic took hold. In a moment he tried to push himself away from the wall but Clive put a hand on his shoulder to keep him still.
“You can’t feel it with your system pumped full of pain killers but you’re injured internally. You need to keep still or you’re going to bleed out before we can get you back to the ship. The suit will keep your vitals stable for now, but you need to move as little as possible.”
Bobby gave him a lopsided smile. “I appreciate the effort, Colonel, but you and I both know that the only way out of here is back through the door we just sealed behind us. This just turned into a one way mission.”
Clive studied his bio readouts for another moment then closed the panel. “And I admire your bravery, son, but we’re not trapped yet. There’s more than one way out of here. You just sit still and save your strength for when it’s time to move. That’s an order.”
Bobby gave him a weak salute. “Yes, sir.”
Pushing himself to his feet, Clive glanced at the hall they had entered through then looked back down at Bobby.
“I’ll tell you what you can do,” Clive said. “You can keep an ear out for anyone entering that hallway. We don’t want any of those bastards sneaking up behind us before we’re finished here. If you hear anything, give a shout over the comm set. Can you do that?”
“I can do that,” Bobby said as he rested his head back against the wall.
Clive didn’t like the pallor of his complexion. There was only so much the suit’s autodoc could do for him. If his condition deteriorated any more he was going to have to key the suit to place him in stasis. That should keep him alive for a while, but he would need to have proper medical care soon or he would die.
There was nothing more Clive could do for him at the moment so he turned away and looked around the vast room. In spite of what he had said to Bobby he wasn’t sure if in fact there was another way out of here. While Bruce and Jimmy did their jobs, Clive began searching the room for a way out.